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I also have wholesale accounts for Amsoil synthetic oils & Mann air/oil filters. And Universal Garage (150 Binnington Court) is the best place in Kingston to take your tii if it needs any major repairs.

I also have wholesale accounts for Amsoil synthetic oils & Mann air/oil filters. And Universal Garage (150 Binnington Court) is the best place in Kingston to take your tii if it needs any major repairs.

Thanks for the reply! I hope you don't mind a few questions from time to time from a newbie with the '02s. The guy I bought the car from had at one time an Amsoil dealership too, in fact they had cases of oil left in the garage.

When I pull the car out of storage I will defiantly look into Universal Garage. I was interested in finding out who would be the best people to do some of the larger work on the car.

Love that original 2002 steering wheel you have there, I would love to go back to a stock wheel in the car and remove the Momo one.

I would strongly advise you to do all work on the car yourself. They're relatively simple to work on and the factory manual is available from the dealership. I've done a ton of work on my car over the last decade or so, saved myself a lot of money.

I would strongly advise you to do all work on the car yourself. They're relatively simple to work on and the factory manual is available from the dealership. I've done a ton of work on my car over the last decade or so, saved myself a lot of money.

I am going to attempt a lot of the work myself, but there are some things I know that I will not be able to do. The previous owner had a large selection of manuals in the trunk of the car so I will be able to do a lot hopefully. I just know that there are some things that I will have to defer to the pros on.

I want to make this as much a labour of love as I can though. I will take your advise and do as much as I possibly can myself. I want that satisfaction

I know it has been a long time since I posted, but not having a garage and having the car just sitting in storage meant the winter was spent just researching things and stewing.

This weekend I brought the BMW out of storage. This meant that I was $50 poorer because I had to pay for a tow to my parents house, but little did I know that would be just the beginning of my frustrations.

We get the car to the house and push it into the garage ready for me to get it back on its feet. I pumped up the tires and then decided to work back to front on the car. When the car was being bedded down for the year, I broke the key off in the trunk lock. That really sucked a lot but I decided to start there.

Using some info I have gathered over the years I made a key extractor to help me get the broken remains out of the trunk lock. I had a spare key so this meant that I would still be able to unlock it and all would be good. Turns out this was not to be the case. It appears that the cylinder shattered which is why the key got stuck in the first place meaning this was no longer an option. The trunk release button which is also the key hole pushed into the car and would not return as a result. FUN!

So I took to the car with a drill and had to drill out the entire cylinder out of the car and punch it into the trunk. This resulted in a lovely hole where my trunk release and key used to be. We tried for a few hours to pop the trunk manually but to no success.. Trying different methods discussed online including disassembling the rear seat and removing it, as well as the package try in the back to get inside the trunk.

I finally decided to give up on Saturday and have a night to think about it all as I was getting a bit frustrated.

Sunday with fresh eyes and armed with a bit more research on the actual lock mechanism I figured out how it worked and where I needed to concentrate my efforts. After 1h working the in garage, success! The trunk was opened. This meant that I now had access to all the manuals that were safely stored in the trunk so I could do more serious work. I removed the latch for the trunk for the time being, just so that I would not have to worry about it locking again before I can blow over $110 on a new key and lock mech for the car.. yikes..

I then set about removing that DAMNED UGLY WING from the decklid. I wanted to see how bad everything was under it so I knew how much repair welding I was going to have to do. It turns out that there were 6 holes drilled in the trunklid meaning that I will have to strip the area of paint, prep the metal, plug weld them then grind them, then filler, then smooth, then primer before I can even look at touching up the paint on the trunk. An easier method would be to just bondo the area, but I would rather do it correctly.

Good thing I did remove the wing, as it turns out that when the holes were drilled in the trunk the bare metal was not protected after the fact, so rust was starting to form under the screws that held the wing to it. I stripped 3 of the screws that held on the wing because they were quite frozen in place. This meant that I had to break out the drill and remove the heads of the screws to get that abomination off my car.

End of the day today I have no wing, the rear seats are removed and the parts I have on hand are now inventoried.. This means I have a long way to go but I am on my way. Next weekend I will be removing the trunk lid and sanding down the areas then putting on a weld through primer.. If that goes well I am going to probably even lay down the first plugs in the trunk.

FUN!

So that was my weekend of work in a nutshell..

A fun little aside, I have started keeping a blog on the progress as well over on Jalopnik using their Kinja system. It caught the attention of the editors there and they posted about it on the main page. I thought that was kinda fun, and has been almost completely positive. Of course there are a few people there who feel the need to be dicks, but what can you do.

I'll be local in Kingston for this spring/summer, so if you ever need extra hands give me a shout. It would be good to know someone local, that way I can have some inspiration to get my project moving. lol